Together as One
by MrandMrsTemple
Summary: Imprisoned in the Pliocene with no human companionship has changed Danny Quinn for the worse. Now he plots his return to the present with the only person he can talk to: himself.


**Alright readers, before you start reading, let me explain a few things.**

**This is what I believe will become of Danny during his time in the Pliocene. Since he is more comfortable around people than he is around animals, and tends not to be comfortable with something unless he is in control, I suspect he will not adapt well to a life where there is no one else to give orders to or talk to, and where he must obey the laws of nature. Furthermore, his newly formed hatred of animals stems from his total ignorance of nature and is a consequence of his belief that he can run a team that regularly interacts with creatures and nature without learning anything about them. I don't know if any of you have noticed, but personally, I have found that when dealing with a creature, Danny shows no desire to learn or understand anything about it. And I don't think he really cares about the team's true purpose: to study and learn about anomalies. He only cares about the action, and being a leader who does not have to follow orders.**

**In my fic, he is reaping the rewards of his arrogance and ignorance. But his ego prevents him from taking into account that his bad experiences with animals are down to his own ignorance of nature. Instead he blames it on the creatures themselves.**

**Anyway, enough talk. I've said all I need to. Enjoy your read. But be warned, some of this may cause nausea and/or vomiting.**

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Dark clouds overcast the sky and the sound of rolling thunder echoed throughout the Rift Valley. Its inhabitants trembled as they felt the ominous feeling of the coming storm.

As the first drops of rain fell to the ground, a family of dinofelis made their way to their shelter in the forest at the other side of the lake. The mother cat picked up one cub by the scruff of its neck, while her other two ambled along close behind. Soon, they reached the stretch of shoreline that went near to the hill, the hill that most animals now avoided because of the creature that had taken up residence in the cave there.

Keeping up with their mother's lengthly strides was difficult for the two remaining dinofelis cubs, particularly since there was now the added obstacle of puddles. Like most cats, dinofelis hated water and the cubs were trying, with significant difficulty, to avoid the puddles that were rapidly forming around them. As they neard the base of the hill, the youngest placed his paw in his third puddle that day. He yelped and lifted his paw, only to see not water dripping from it, but blood. Looking down, he saw to his shock that he had stepped in a puddle of blood, which was rapidly congealing into a thick, crimson goo. Looking up, he saw that the pool was being fed by a stream of blood trickling down the hill. It appeared to be coming from the cave.

Suddenly the cub heard his mother growl at him from further along the shore. She did not want him anywhere near that hill. And he did not fancy sticking around. Quickly he hurried towards his mother and siblings, the water about his feet washing the blood off his paw.

However, the pool of blood continued to grow bigger as the stream that came from the cave continued to feed it. If one was to follow that stream, they would find that its source was a freshly killed warthog. The carcass showed that it had been killed in an unbelievably violent way. There were large gashes in its side where its attacker had hacked into it, its ribs were clearly visible through these gashes. One hind leg was broken and twisted into a grotestque position, the ivory white bone sticking out for all to see. It's belly had been slit, its pink intestines had spilt out all over the ground, helping to feed the stream of blood. Almost worse than that perhaps was its head, it was hanging on to the rest of its body by only a few strands of hair and tendon, and bent back in a position that the animal could never have achieved when it was alive.

A hand coated with blood reached into the carcass of the warthog and grabbed hold of a piece of loose-ish flesh. It belonged to a creature that resembled a man, but only just. This thing was hunched over and sqautting on the ground amidst the soil that the rain was rapidly turning to mud. The shoes this creature was wearing were scuffed and very dirty, just like the shirt it was wearing. Once this would have been a red and white checkered shirt, but now it was filthy and stained with with so much dirt it might as well have been made brown. In many areas, the shirt was torn and ragged, showing the areas where its owner had been scratched by big cats or bitten by hyenas. One of the creature's arms was covered with a white sleeve, but the other sleeve had long since been torn away, revealing the hairy arm of the creature, studded with toothmarks from when a crocodile had bitten into it.

But perhaps the most terrifying characteristic of this thing was the face. It was covered in scraggly, unkempt, dirty brown hair that grew from its head, chin and upper lip. The areas of the face that were not covered with hair were coated with grime and had clearly undergone severe sunburn, judging by the peeling dead skin. Beneath the masses of hair, one could just make out a mouth full of yellow, rotten teeth, and a pair of eyes, the left puffy and swollen, the right narrowed and baleful.

Those who had once this known this thing before would probably not have done so now were it not for the prominent scar on his neck, put there by a baby future predator. The creature that was hunced over and tearing into the slain warthog was Danny Quinn. He was the one who had hacked the poor warthog to death. Next to him lay the stone knife he had carved, with which he had killed the warthog right in front of her piglets, now orphans and doomed to die at the hands of leopards and jackels without their mother to protect them. Tugging at her flesh, he tore it from her body, brought it to his mouth and bit into it, blood trickled down his chin like a waterfall.

Once, Danny would have cooked his meat. But back home, he had always put his food in the microwave. In the Pliocene there were no such luxuries, and Danny had been forced the cook animals he caught manually. But his lack of experience with cooking along with his impatience had meant that the meat was usually still only half cooked by the time he reached the end of his tether. So eventually, he had decided to forsake cooking and just eat his meat raw. At first this had caused vomiting and diaorrhea, but now that Danny's taste buds had adapted to raw meat, so had his digestive system. In fact, he now preferred his meat like this, it gave him more satisfaction at the kill. He enjoyed hunting for his food now, and killing it was even better.

"A good kill" said Danny to himself as he swallowed his mouthful of meat.

"Yes" said Danny. "And it put up such a fight as well. Gave us something to remember it by, didn't it?"

He fingered the hole in his side that the warthog's tusk had made.

"It did out of love for its babies" said Danny as he bit into the meat in his hand.

"Of course it did, so they could grow up into more stupid, ugly things that could try and gore us to death" said Danny through a mouthful of flesh. Drops of blood sprayed from his mouth as he spoke. "And who are you to speak of love? Remember what we have learned, there is no love in this world. Not among animals, they're just stupid useless things. They don't have feelings, espescially not love!"

"People might do"

"How can you say that? People have cheated us, abandoned us, left us to die."

"But we need people, don't we?"

"Yes, Danny, you're right" said Danny, stroking his beard. "And we also need an anomaly, an anomaly to take us back. First anomaly that opens up, we go through it."

"What if it's not home. What if its another place like this?"

"Then we find another one, and kill any creature that gets in our way."

"Yes"

"Yes, Danny, yes" said Danny. "They hate us, animals hate us, all of them. Hate us. They want to destroy us, wipe us out, look what the ones here have done to us!"

He ran his sleeved left arm along his bare right, felt his fingers come into contact with the toothmarks embedded in it.

"All we did was splash about a bit in the lake, have some fun. And that crocodile attacked us, it wanted to kill us, Danny. And this as well!"

He fingered the claw marks in his left side, felt the blood that had dried around his wounds.

"All we did was go near that lion cub and this what its mother did to us!" Danny spat on the ground with contempt. "She was probably teaching her babies how to kill people."

"Yes, of course she was. You are right."

"That's why the creatures come through the anomalies into our time, Danny. They want to kill everyone, so that they can take over the world. But we musn't let them have it, must we?"

"No, no, we musn't" Danny admitted subserviently.

"That's why we need people, Danny. We must get back to the ARC, and tell them of what we have learnt about creatures. Then we can send Becker and his men into every anomaly, give the creatures a taste of their own medicine. We cannot wipe them out on our own, Danny. But with Becker and his men we can pump them with bullets, spill their blood, eat their flesh."

"Abby won't agree with this" said Danny.

"Abby!" snarled Danny. "You are thinking about what Abby would think. Abby has done nothing to help us. I saved us, it was me. I was the one who helped us kill out food, stab our predators to death. Where would you be without me? You forget about Abby. The creatures nearly killed her brother and she forgives them, that shows you she's a fool. We don't need her. Once we are team leader again we can sack her, and Connor. Who needs to more know about the creatures? We already know all we need to know. We need to destroy them!"

"What if they have a new team leader?"

"Then we stamp that leader out. Don't forget, we are the team leader. Us, nobody else, nobody. Espescially not that Cutter." Danny spat out the word Cutter like it was a bad taste in his mouth. "Mr. Perfect Cutter was never the team leader, he was a sap! A science puke! Nobody needs people like him, nobody needs to know anything about anomalies. The team was useless when we first found them, they never killed anything. Always wanted to know more about anomalies. Then we came along and we made the team the way it was. Stuff rules, stuff precautions, they're a waste of time. More creatures died under our leadership than have probably ever died since the team was first formed. Now we will make it into an extermination squad!"

"Yes, yes' said Danny excitedly. He tore another piece of meat from the warthog and held it up high.

"When we return to the team, nature will not be the master. We will. And we will feast on the spoils of our killings!"

And with that he tore into the flesh in his hand. As he bit down on it, an almighty crash of thunder and lightning rang out across the Rift Valley.

The Valley of Death.


End file.
